Searching is a key aspect of many information-related tasks in work and personal settings. With the advent of the Internet and massive amounts of data being gathered, searching that data has become ever more challenging. Brainstorming is a critical part of business and problem solving. It is used in many applications, including marketing, engineering, inventing, research, problem solving, etc. Many search related activities entail finding something that is well-defined. If one wishes to find information about a new product or service, there are usually enough known elements to uniquely identify the target (product name, product function, company, inventor, audience, etc.). However, there are other types of search activities that do not fall into this scenario where the search target is unknown. A person may, for example, want to explore the latest or lesser known areas of energy exploration, or the latest theories related to a field of science. These types of searches do not have well-defined targets or target words with which to perform the search. One application of this type of searching relates to brainstorming. Brainstorming can be very challenging, as most people's thinking is constrained by their personal experiences or areas of expertise. Participants want to think of concepts that are “out-of-the-box”, yet related to the idea at hand. Current methods do not organize related ideas and present them in a way that allows for variation of how “related” the concepts are. When someone is brainstorming, simply thinking of words that are closely related does not always yield the most relevant search terms.